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Topic: Where did SC1 steal its spinning starmap and animation window from? (Read 4863 times)
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guesst
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Ancient Shofixti Warrior
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I remember finding and playing a game a while back because someone mentioned that it inspired SC1's spinning star map and little animated window. now I can't seem to find it.
In the end, it did have a spinning star map and an animated window. And while SC1 may have borrowed these elements, SC1 was so much a different game that it's difficult to compare the two. IMHO, more game should have had that little animated window.
Doe anyone remember the name of this game?
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RTyp06
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That's a good question but I think it might be who stole the spinning map from SC1? I'm pretty sure that the idea for SC1 came directly from PR3's earlier work, Archon.
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Megagun
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Moo
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"Supremacy aka Overlord", I think.
You should probably know where to find it, guesst.
That's Amiga/C64, though... And no, I have never played it. 
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guesst
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That's it. And that's where I saw it before. I'm gonna cross reference those two so I can find it next time.
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Valaggar
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Star Control was released in July 1990. Supremacy was released in 1990 too. There's no way one game could steal something as big as the 3D starmap.
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« Last Edit: September 15, 2007, 10:23:34 am by Valaggar the Wackrazy One »
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RTyp06
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Personally, I don't care for the rotating Starmap in SC1. It would have been better without it IMO.
btw Is ArchonX multiplayer only?
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Valaggar
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SC1 wouldn't have been better without the rotating starmap. SC2 was worse without it.
Out of interest, how would you have implemented the 3D map in SC2? It worked great in SC1, but those were fairly small maps without the same sort of depth (star systems and so forth). SC3 certainly demonstrated (IMO) that making a large 3D map can be very hard. Or did you find that map easy to navigate?
Plus, after all, the 3D starmap in SC1 was pretty much just eye-candy - SC1 maps were basically pathways made of stars on the surface of a cylinder - the exact same map could've been reproduced on a 2D surface, wrapping around on the X axis (like in Civilization). And even if the stars weren't arranged strictly on the surface of a cylinder, SC1 maps were just topologic, not geometric, maps - the exact same pathways could've been reproduced in 2D, it's not like you were allowed to linger in interstellar space.
A 3D starmap may help for "realism", but it does nothing for gameplay. Good choice putting the quotation marks around "realism". After all, with speeds much more than thousands of times greater than the speed of light, "height" doesn't matter anymore, as the "height" of our galaxy is much, much smaller than it's "width". Not to mention that if we're dealing with HyperSpace, we can just say that that's how gravity wells are arranged there - in a plane.
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« Last Edit: September 17, 2007, 02:39:28 pm by Valaggar the Wackrazy One »
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guesst
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SC1 wouldn't have been better without the rotating starmap. SC2 was worse without it.
Out of interest, how would you have implemented the 3D map in SC2? It worked great in SC1, but those were fairly small maps without the same sort of depth (star systems and so forth). SC3 certainly demonstrated (IMO) that making a large 3D map can be very hard. Or did you find that map easy to navigate?
Plus, after all, the 3D starmap in SC1 was pretty much just eye-candy - SC1 maps were basically pathways made of stars on the surface of a cylinder - the exact same map could've been reproduced on a 2D surface, wrapping around on the X axis (like in Civilization). And even if the stars weren't arranged strictly on the surface of a cylinder, SC1 maps were just topologic, not geometric, maps - the exact same pathways could've been reproduced in 2D, it's not like you were allowed to linger in interstellar space.
Are you sure about that? it seems to me there were paths through the middle of the space. I remember a discussion on the PONAF boards where we tried to disassemble how the maps were made and in the end just had to throw our hands up in surrender. I'd be kinda disapointed to discover what you say is true.
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« Last Edit: September 19, 2007, 06:37:35 pm by guesst »
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RTyp06
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The 3D map worked well but did nothing for the game imo. And thanx again Novus.
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« Last Edit: September 18, 2007, 01:32:25 am by RTyp06 »
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Lukipela
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Actually, I did find the starmaps easy to navigate. Well, not easy to navigate, but that was the beauty of them. Plotting out paths, painstakingly navigating those paths with your capitol ships, only to discover that the path you had chosen was a dead-end and the dead end you sent your wimps to mine out is now being violently reamed, that's what the game was about.
You seem to be talking exclusively about the Starmaps in SC1, not about the SC3 starmap I asked you about, unless I missed large parts of the game.
My question was wether you found the SC3 starmap as useful and easy as the SC1 maps, seeing as it was a lot bigger and had no tactical parts (you could travel from anywhere to anywhere). And if you didn't think that it was as good as the SC1 maps, how would you have implemented a SC2 map?
Valaggar: Yeah, any of those would have made it easier and more intuitive with a large map.
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What's up doc?
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